The problem was first raised by French tabloid newspaper MetroFrance almost one month ago, but since then a flood of similar reports has emerged in countries all over the world.

Heavyweight technology websites TechCrunch and TNW were quick to launch their own investigations into users' claims the social media site's timeline update, recently rolled out in France, was causing privacy headaches.

TNW dispatched their Facebook specialist Josh Constantine, who found email receipts showed the supposed private messages were in fact wall posts, and the posts did not appear in users' Facebook messages inbox.

Constantine's investigation supports the official statement supplied by Facebook to TechCrunch:

Every report we've seen, we've gone back and checked. We haven't seen one report that's been confirmed. A lot of the confusion is because before 2008 there were no likes and no comments on wall posts. People went back and forth with wall posts instead of having a conversation [via comments].

A small number of users raised concerns after what they mistakenly believed to be private messages appeared on their Timeline. Our engineers investigated these reports and found that the messages were older wall posts that had always been visible on the users' profile pages. Facebook is satisfied that there has been no breach of user privacy.

But in spite of Facebook's public explanations, users continue to believe their privacy has been breached and many are vowing to quit.

"Facebook private messages def on timeline. Same for my friends and some very embarrassing msgs posted that were def private," posted Twitter user StephS.

Compromising posts

triple j's Hack program has obtained screenshots of users' profiles they claim support their accusations.

One belongs to 25-year-old Facebook user Rachel, who told Hack that when a friend warned her about the leak, she quickly checked her profile.

"I'd seen a post from a friend a couple of days ago saying that our privacy was at risk and that old private message could be seen on your timeline by other people," she said.

"So I went through my history and sure enough there were private messages."

Rachel said she knew they were private because they were from an ex-boyfriend that her family "wouldn't want" her to be in contact with.

"I was hiding [our relationship] from my family, to protect them from something that they didn't want to know."

Rachel has supplied Hack with screenshots of a timeline post and her private message inbox which appear to show the message was private, but ended up published on her timeline.

The compromising nature of the posts caused many users to delete them from their walls instantly - in turn destroying the proof.

Shocked when she first saw the message, Rachel decided to "hide" the message from her timeline, but traces of the post remained in her profile's activity log.

In the screenshots supplied to Hack, there is a discrepancy in the timestamps attached to the post and the message. The initial message was received on September 1, 2011, while the timeline post was published at 1:49am on September 2, 2011.

Hack asked Rachel if her boyfriend could have cut and paste the message from inbox and onto her wall without her noticing.

Rachel said there is "no way" her ex could have also posted the original message to her wall.

"No... He definitely didn't. I would've known if it was on my timeline and I would've deleted it," she said.

"He's not posting things on my timeline, he's doing it as a private message because quite a lot of friends of his would be annoyed and quite upset that he was in contact with me.

"It's not just me that needs to hide it from people, it's him as well."

Last year technologist Nik Cibrulovic exposed Facebook storing its users' browsing data even after they were logged out.

These days he works with Facebook on improving their privacy and security.

Mr Cubrilovic says initially he wrote off the reports of a privacy breach and agreed with Facebook's official explanations, but now he is not so sure.

"There is still something going on here with these new cases," he said.

"It's definitely not happening to all users, so it could be a rogue application or a rogue bug... but it's not the big broad privacy issue that we were discussing last week."

French watchdog satisfied

Last week, France's privacy watchdog ruled that Facebook users' privacy had not been breached.

It said it was "satisfied that there was no bug or technical glitch that made public the private messages or personal information of Facebook users."

Hack invited Facebook's new Australian representative Liam Walsh onto the program, but he declined the invitation.

The company told Hack Mr Walsh was busy working on a branding program.

Facebook declined to respond to Hack's question on whether they categorically deny private messages have ever been shared on people's timelines.

Instead, a spokesperson provided the program with this statement:

"We've made several improvements to the way older content is displayed on timeline to make the audience and other information clearer. People will begin to see these changes on their timeline starting today."

Indisputable proof of a technical glitch causing a privacy breach has been difficult to confirm.

But the editor of online gadget blog Gizmodo, Luke Hopewell, says it does not matter if the stories are true.

"This is a huge problem, because Facebook's main commodity is trust," he said.

As long as people believe there has been a glitch and their privacy has been compromised, Mr Hopewell says Facebook has a privacy problem.

"When you think about it, it's a company that's publicly trading on a stock exchange that literally trades on nothing," he said.

"It's a company that operates on trust, and its product that it sells to advertisers is our details.

"So to breach that trust in front of 900 million users, is a serious, serious problem."

If you believe Facebook has breached your privacy you can contact their office on 1300 363 992. To register a complaint with the Information Commissioner you must have first lodged a complaint with Facebook.

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